august

:: Guess what I did this weekend? I'm still not sure about the colors, and there's a little left to do, but the site now uses html for structure and CSS for formatting. Blue/gray goes out, gold/red takes you somewhere else on this site. IE users, if the page suddenly stops before the end, hit your back button and then come forward again. I thought I had this fixed. I will continue to work on it.

If you are using an old-fashioned browser (Netscape 4, I'm looking at you), it will look distressingly plain but should be perfectly readable. If you are using a modern browser and something is terribly wrong, please drop me a line (note the spamblock!).

Thanks to the amazing Eric Costello for his CSS layout templates. I created this design by hacking, modifying, and otherwise goofing around with his templates. And thanks to everyone at the Web Standards Project for their evangelism and educational resources. [ 08/04/02 ]

The central struggle going on in the world today is this one: between hope and fear, love or paranoia, generosity or trying to shore up one's own portion.... Our only hope is to revert to a consciousness of generosity and love. That's not to go to a lalla-land where there are no forces like those who destroyed the World Trade Center. But it is to refuse to allow that to become the shaping paradigm of the 21st century.

Much better to make the shaping paradigm the story of the police and firemen who risked (and in many cases lost) their lives in order to save other human beings who they didn't even know. Let the paradigm be the generosity and kindness of people when they are given a social sanction to be caring instead of self-protective. We cannot let war, hatred and fear become the power in this new century that it was in the last century.

::The Daily Summit is a weblog that will be updating from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Joburg this month. Creator David Steven writes me:

I've long been interested in the potential of blogging to open a window onto major events. We now have the chance to report on what happens when you ask 106 world leaders and 65,000 other delegates to come up with a 'blueprint for the 21st century'.

At the moment, the site is tracking preparations for the event and reflecting opinion from across the political spectrum. We officially launch on 19 August and will be live from Joburg a few days later. To be honest, we don't know what will happen then, but the idea is to wander the streets and the corridors, picking up the news and the gossip and post to the site as often as a working internet connection looms into view.

Weblogs as journalism? If you've read my book, you know that I'm skeptical--I think the form excels at filtering, media criticism, and eye-witness accounting but is generally ill-suited to offering an original, complete story of an event. But this has potential.[ 08/09/02 ]

Bioregionalists aim to find a balance between the resident community's needs for livelihoods and the potential for natural resources in their bioregions, as defined by ecological, economic, and social criteria.

Bioregionalism is a fancy name for living a rooted life. Sometimes called 'living in place,' bioregionalism means you are aware of the ecology, economy and culture of the place where you live, and are committed to making choices that enhance them.

A bioregion's natural unity is most powerfully expressed in the watershed. Water joins together biological life in a seamless dance of exchange, so bioregionalists particularly pay attention to the health, quality, and sources of water. Bioregionalism aims for a balance in which humans leave room for other species, and mesh their activities into natural ecosystems. Bioregionalists are practitioners par excellence of Aldo Leopold's land ethic, the first rule of which is, 'Save all the parts.'

47 of 71 sauces from Guadalajara were contaminated with E. coli versus 10 of 25 sauces from Houston (P = 0.03); the median number of E. coli colonies per gram of sauce was 1000 in the Guadalajara sauces versus 0.0 in the Houston sauces (P = 0.007).

There are two directions that I think post-environmentalism should and will follow. The first is urban sustainability.... The bad news is that our present large cities can be awful environments, and the necessary news is that they are becoming the dominant habitat for our species. Our population is increasing at an extremely rapid rate and within a few years more than 50% of all homo sapiens on the planet will live in cities of 25,000 or more. The World Watch Institute estimates that this will probably occur at around 2010, but it may happen faster. [...]

We have to begin practicing water reuse, especially west of the Mississippi.... An example of water reuse would be to take the water from your shower and use it again to flush the toilet. ...we could cut water use by as much as 50%. I have been in homes where this was actually done without any mechanism, but a small pump and a filter with a second set of pipes would be all that is necessary anywhere. [...]

For cities of over one hundred thousand, it's a case of not what you do but the way what you do it.... What would happen if we began growing vegetables on rooftops of city buildings? ...How about alternative energy installations? ...How much of the energy consumed in a city could be provided by renewable energy through direct solar or windmills or whatever? Water reuse, if you reuse fifty percent of the water how many people can live there?

[ 08/12/02 ]

:: I'm excited to think that with a simple setup I could reuse fifty percent of my water. Over a year ago I linked to the NYTimes article describing the state of the world in 2015, based on a projections from the intelligence community. Among other things, the article reports that 'by 2015, nearly half of the world's population--more than three billion people--will be in countries lacking sufficient water, and that even more genetically modified crops or projects to desalt sea water will not substantially help.' [NY Times: rebeccas_pocket, password: pocket]

I haven't heard much about this lately, but I would love to be surrounded by systems that were designed for water conservation. Reusing at home would be great; city-wide programs to reuse urban gray water to irrigate farmland as many countries do would be even better (from the Johns Hopkins Population Report).

Except for the chlorine bleach. Washers would need to be designed with a setting for 'bleach' that would switch the output straight into the blackwater pipe. Or just add onboard water heaters to all models, like the high-efficiency models that reach temperatures that eliminate the need for bleach as a disinfectant.[ 08/12/02 ]

Look, I'm no fan of corporate malfeasance, and I guess I understand that the law is designed to make it absolutely not worth it to act on insider information, but if your stockbroker called you and told you she thought a stock was going to go down--even if she let you know she had heard it from an insider--would you have the self control to just sit there and and watch it slide?

Is it because she's Martha--or because she's a very powerful woman--that the media and the law are so focused on this transaction? On the scale with CEOs and Big Five accounting firms that deliberately obfuscate financial records to deceive stock holders, surely this is small potatoes.[ 08/12/02 ]

:: The Christian Science Monitor disapproves of the regulations drawn up by the Federal Election Commission to regulate--and undermine--the implementation of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill.

For example, the FEC decided to define narrowly the meaning of the words 'to solicit' used in the law. In effect, so long as a federal officeholder doesn't overtly ask for a soft-money contribution, he or she is free to suggest one.

The administration decided to abandon the core of the Clinton rules, a requirement that doctors, hospitals and other health care providers obtain written consent from patients before using or disclosing personal medical information for treatment or paying claims. Instead, providers will have to notify patients of their remaining rights and have to make 'a good-faith effort to obtain a written acknowledgment of receipt of the notice.'

Although a drugstore could not sell health information on a patient to a drug company, Mr. Markey said, the drug company could pay a pharmacist to recommend that patients switch from one drug to another. The definition of 'marketing' in the new rules excludes communications to a patient by a health care provider who is promoting goods and services offered by the provider itself.

::It's the End of the World as we know it:The Peak Of World Oil Production And The Road To The Olduvai Gorge predicts that our way of life will end in 2030, due to a massive failure of our power grid. Whatever you make of this scenario, the article makes an interesting point: from the perspective of everyday life, electricity--generated by whatever means--is the engine of modern society. Oil moves us around, but electricity delivers our way of life.

I'm not in a position to judge the accuracy of the claims made here, or even the facts on which the line of reasoning is based, and the entire website is filled with articles to this effect. I offer the article as a data point: if, in a few years, the power grid seems to be failing, you had a heads up. Meanwhile, I can't stop thinking about the article's claims.

I gravely doubt Earth can sustain human life only at a Stone Age level. It seems to me that an agrarian level is very sustainable: traditionally, farms provided nearly all their own needs, trading excess livestock and produce for a few manufactured goods. Here's the thing: population levels. Here's the thing about that: antibiotics. I wonder if antibiotics are the biggest scientific advance ever?

There are lots of things everyday people can do to make their lives more sustainable without returning to stone age or agrarian levels. To my mind, the identification of electricity as the cornerstone of modern everyday life is a key observation. I wonder how much electricity could be generated through solar and wind and water sources without using fossil fuels at all? If we were content to travel less, and to rely our own regions for most of our needs, how many of our conveniences could we keep? Could I run my washing machine? My computer? My telephone?

Office buildings would be unsustainable, of course.

If this scenario were to play out, of course, the federal government and military would have electricity long after the rest of us. I'll just take a moment to remind you that our Constitution was designed to work in a world without electricity (hello, Electoral College!), so we needn't fall into anarchy unless we choose to do so. But how does a modern government control the hive mind without television and radio? And will the Web even be worth accessing if all of us can't endlessly add to it every day? (thanks, kurt!)[ 08/12/02 ]

In the late 1990s, [Herman Miller] invited Birsel to undertake a major project: Rethink the cubicle system that has ruled the open office for 30 years. The request was a leap, since Birsel knew little about office furniture. But Herman Miller was hoping for innovation. Birsel responded with new materials and a human-centered design.

'I paired them with another student as a "study buddy" and told them they had to help each other, online, with the work assignments. If they didn't, I would tell their parents that they were wasting their time online.'

Teal then went one step further. She signed up for instant messaging and logged on each night to answer students' questions. As a result, Teal said, students' marks improved. Some dramatically.

Fantastic. But remember, Marylaine estimates that only 15% of all knowledge is on the Web. I agree with the Technorealists that 'wiring the schools will not save them.' The problem is not getting kids to computers or teachers to the Web, it's using all the tools we have available to teach students to carefully evaluate information, wherever it may be found.

If you're interested in the development of research and thinking in the Information Age, it might be worth re-reading the article on post-Net thinking I linked last month, which is where I first ran into the 15% figure. [ 08/16/02 ]

'We have considerably better information about the number of people who are injured by farm machinery every year or the number of people bitten by brown recluse spiders than we have for numbers of abducted kids,' says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. 'I don't think there's really an epidemic of abductions, but it's really impossible to know.'

[ 08/16/02 ]

:: Two more reviews of the Weblog Handbook: Chicklit offers the most comprehensive review of the book to date; and Cruftbox proposes a very interesting candidate for the weblog's progenitor.[ 08/16/02 ]

:: U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar is confused by the government's insistence that Yaser Esam Hamdi be held as an 'unlawful enemy combatant'. In reviewing the case, he's asking some fundamental questions.

'I tried valiantly to find a case of any kind, in any court, where a lawyer
couldn't meet' with a client, Doumar said. 'This case sets the most
interesting precedent in relation to that which has ever existed in
Anglo-American jurisprudence since the days of the Star Chamber,' a
reference to English kings' secret court from the 1400s to the 1600s. [...]

'I have no desire to have an enemy combatant get out of any status,' Doumar
said. 'However, I do think that due process requires something other than a
basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers
and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just
think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?'

Impetus for change in suburban growth patterns is growing. A grassroots interest in change has been slowly building as more people become dissatisfied with existence in the typical modern city. Patterns in home-buying, trends in real estate values, and public surveys show that a growing number of people are interested in alternatives to 'traditional' suburban housing tracts. The literature in architecture and planning now discusses how to create built environments that enhance people's lives while protecting the natural environment. And solid research has uncovered economic drawbacks to sprawl and even to growth in general - as well as positive economic benefits for open space.

In the SDI Group, people from a number of Federal Agencies work together to create indicators of sustainable development for the United States. We also often work in collaboration with others to support indicator efforts at the State, local and international levels. [...]

An important part of sustainable development is to ensure that our children and grandchildren have at least as much opportunity to meet their needs and wants as we do. Indicators of sustainable development must therefore include measures of the various economic, resource, environmental and social endowments we pass on to the next generation as well as measures of how well we are meeting our own needs and wants. The SDI set of experimental indicators does both.

This protest was the latest in a month of all-women demonstrations that began July 8 with a 10-day siege of ChevronTexaco's offices in Escravos. Observers say that protests by women are becoming the most effective tool to force social improvements by US multinational oil companies doing business in Africa.

The Escravos women, who ranged in age between 30 to 90, used a potent tactic: they threatened to take their clothes off.

:: A while back I pointed you to e-sheep's vision of blogging in the future. Creator Patrick Farley is back with 'an alternate history of the US/Afghanistan conflict:' President Gore, an Open Source Military, E-bombs...and Spiders. If you're not a comic fan but you're interested in technology and its future, this strip is definitely worth a look.

So far, Patrick has published three parts. This is a comic strip, so, obviously, graphics-heavy. If you have a slow connection, I suggest you right click to open Part One, Part Two, and Part Three in separate windows. Get a cup of tea, let them download, and treat yourself to an imaginative vision of the day after tomorrow.[ 08/21/02 ]

:: In an attempt to battle global warming, China is building straw-bale houses and Britain is building self-sufficient earthships with full government approval.

Water is preserved to ensure the supply is used most efficiently. Graywater recycling funnels water from baths, showers and sinks into the garden, where action by plant roots breaks it down. This plant-filtered water is then used to flush the toilet and becomes blackwater, which is recycled using a composting or solar toilet to create natural -- and highly nutritious -- fertilizer.

'We're currently experimenting with a distillation system that would turn recycled blackwater into drinking water,' says Jonah Reynolds, son of Michael Reynolds and an Earthship builder based in Taos. 'When completed it could mean that 20 percent of water used in the Earthship could be returned to the cistern.'

That's terrific! But I doubt if you'll ever get mainstream Britain or America to drink that water. We like it to go into the big pipe to be processed, drained into a large natural body of water, and then piped back to us again. Irrational, yes, but drinking water is supposed to originate in the tumbling rapids, not the toilet. (via lockergnome bits & bytes)[ 08/23/02 ]

:: Walker writes to alert me that the August 19 and 26 issues of the New Yorker are one combined food issue. (August 19 is online right now.) My correspondent points me particularly to the latest column by Calvin Trillin: The Red and The White:
Is it possible that wine connoisseurs can't tell them apart?[ 08/23/02 ]

:: The world of orchid fanciers is rather more cut-throat than I would have guessed. When nursery owner Michael Kovach brought back a spectacular new species from the Andes, scientists at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens went into overdrive, identifying, sketching, and documenting the plant, finally relying on email to ensure that they could publish first and receive credit for the find. [NY Times: rebeccas_pocket, password: pocket]

Several days later, the researchers learned that their haste had not been wasted, as another scientist was rumored to have laid hands on the same new species and was also speeding toward publication. Whoever publishes first wins the honor of determining the Latin name that will forever follow the species. To ensure fast - nearly instantaneous - publication, Selby Gardens published a special issue of its own scientific journal, Selbyana, using e-mail messages to conduct peer reviews.

'We went from totally unidentified species to being published in eight days, validly, in the scientific literature,' Dr. Higgins said.

:: Journalists strive to tell the complete story with fairness and accuracy; webloggers point only to the things that interest them. With such a personal aim, is there a place for ethics in the world of weblogs? In writing my book, I came to the conclusion that there is, but that the ideal for the weblogger is very different than that for the journalist. From the Weblog Handbook: Weblog Ethics.[ 08/26/02 ]

::Desktop filmmaking! Film enthusiasts are creating machinima, films made with computer gaming technology, some of it available for free on the Web. Machinima film looks like a computer game, but relies on traditional storytelling--and the technology is improving quickly.

John Carmack, who co-founded id Software and is widely regarded as a major influence in computer game graphics, said during QuakeCon 2002 that the graphics quality of movies like 'Toy Story' should appear in home computers by the end of 2003.

[ 08/26/02 ]

:: They affect the Earth's climate, create the sound of the ocean, and may have played a key role in the spread of life: The science of bubbles. See also, musical sand.[ 08/26/02 ]

::Canonical Tomes: an attempt to list the best books available on all subjects. It's a volunteer effort and it looks like they're just getting started--if you have expertise in a field, consider contributing to this resource yourself. (via larkfarm, which is excellent, as always--go take a look at what Mike has dug up on the Web lately)[ 08/26/02 ]

:: Yikes! TV's higher threshold of pain. The number of torture scenes on the networks last season grew at a rate
almost double the previous two seasons.[ 08/26/02 ]

:: In response to reports that celebrities have been promoting drugs without disclosing they have been paid to do so, CNN will now reveal these relationships when they exist. On the media literacy listserv, Bob McCannon (warning, pop-up) pointed out that this article does not mention that these ads by drug companies are illegal advertisements for many reasons, including the fact that the stars do not state the side effects of the drugs, and that some were allegedly aired under false pretenses. [NY Times: rebeccaspocket, password: pocket][ 08/28/02 ]

::PapaInk, the International Children's Art Archive, is a 'non-profit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving children's art and reinjecting children's creative spirit into human discourse. Our archival work highlights the socially critical efforts of organizations and individuals who enable children's artistic undertakings. PapaInk's world historical archive of children's art brings together and professionally presents the children's art holdings of organizations such as the UN, SOS Children's Village and the Jewish Museum in Prague.' Learn more about this unique resource.[ 08/28/02 ]

::Floating off the Page, a collection of 'middle columns' from the Wall Street Journal looks terrific. Those pieces are always a delight, ranging in subject matter from dwarf-throwing, the difference between sleazy and cheap hotels, low-flatulence bean, and other off-beat topics. The Wall Street Journal has created a page to promote the book. (via startup garden)[ 08/28/02 ]

The jump in long-term unemployment stems largely from women's growing role in the labor market. Once content to drop out of the work force if they lost their jobs, women increasingly continue to seek new employment, economists Abraham and Shimer argue. In times of slow job creation, that boosts both the unemployment rate and the average time spent between jobs.

:: The Family and Medical Leave Act provides job security to workers who wish to spend up to twelve weeks per year to care for newborns or family members with a serious health condition. Since it was enacted, 6.5 percent of workers have used the law to take time off--but most can't afford to.[ 08/30/02 ]

:: Just a Dumb Idea: CBS is scouting for a family with a rural background to be transplanted to Beverly Hills for their new reality show The Real Beverly Hillbillies (warning: pop-up). BTW, a live-action film of the Flintstones was a really dumb idea, too. Why don't producers ever call me?[ 08/30/02 ]